Now Mr. Young will have a chance to get his writing, and life experiences, gauged by a wider audience than his readings on Eldridge Street. He's sold a memoir to small press Heliotrope Books. The Lo-Down, which reported the news, noted that "Royal offers a fresh perspective on the pursuit of fame." His memoir is to be called Fame Shark, the title Mr. Young uses to refer to his own ever-swimming hunt for renown.

Royal Young. (Photo: Erik Erikson)

On a recent Friday night, the 26-year-old writer Royal Young held a reading of his unpublished memoir Fame Shark at the Lower East Side home of his parents. He had hoped to use the apartment rooftop, but it looked like rain so the event was held indoors. When The Observer arrived, Molly Jong-Fast, whom Mr. Young had enlisted as an opening act, was reading from her novel, The Social Climber’s Handbook, about an Upper East Side mother a little like herself. As we stumbled in, bumping our elbow on a totem pole standing sentry next to the front door, we were hushed by an attentive older woman who turned out to be Mr. Young’s mother.

There was next to no wine left.

There had been a moment of confusion outside, because the name on the apartment’s buzzer did not read “Young.” As it happens, Mr. Young legally changed his name from Hazak Brozgold this summer, though he’d been using the name for years. He wrote about the decision for the website Jewcy, noting that he’d felt branded both by the name Hazak’s Hebrew origins and by its English meaning, strong. “Royal was an even bigger name to fill” than Hazak, he wrote; he’d gotten the name from a 14-year-old girl whom he’d met on MySpace during a lost year after dropping out of college. Despite the age difference, the two had a relationship, but “we never did anything illegal or wrong,” he assured us.

“I was so frustrated with meeting these fuckers at art openings a million times and they’d still get my name wrong,” Mr. Young told The Observer later, elaborating on the name change. “I was like, ‘Fuck them, I’m going to have a name there’s no way in hell they can forget.’” He laughed when we observed that “Royal Young” sounded more claim than name.

Mr. Young is a jaunty if casual dresser—for his reading, he wore a Dior bowling shirt. He is tall and a little pudgy, with sandy hair and a chin dotted with permastubble.

“A big part of my book is seeing my dad as an artist, needing to make money,” Mr. Young told an assembled group as we marveled at the apartment’s customizations—bathroom walls decoupaged with gum wrappers, a bedroom wall dominated by a Mars Attacks!-themed painting, executed by Mr. Young’s brother, the director Fury Young. “I want him to be the next—fucking—Pablo Picasso.” How did he feel about his father’s decision to abandon art for a day job as a social worker? we wondered. “I respect it!” he laughed. “I wouldn’t have been able to do all the drugs I did without it.”

It had not always been so easy: In Fame Shark, Mr. Young wrote that he’d fought with his parents over the name change; the fight was all tied up, he wrote, with his burgeoning alcohol troubles. “By 19, I hid handles of Jim Beam behind my bed pillows,” he elaborated.

Mr. Young’s métier is the confessional memoir: he’s published a number of pieces on various websites and in print outlets, all excerpts from the larger work describing his journey from celebrity obsession to disillusionment. Which isn’t to say he has abandoned the quest for fame entirely. Though he doesn’t operate a blog, his Twitter account is filled with links to his own writing and references to a glamorous life: “Partying in Aziz Ansari’s backyard,” he wrote one evening in June.

Other published excerpts from Fame Shark include a meditation for The Forward on serving as a child extra on the Mel Gibson vehicle Ransom, a piece entitled “My Love Relationship With Celebrities and Fame” for Yahoo’s Shine portal and a New York Press dispatch on a Robert Miller Gallery Christmas party and the snobs and socials in attendance. Of the latter piece, Mr. Young said, “The editor was like, ‘You got us so much hate mail.’ And I was like, ‘I’m so sorry,’ and he was like, ‘No, it’s awesome.’” He said he hopes his writing evokes strong emotions. “My greatest fear is that people read it and they’re like, ‘It was O.K.’”

Mr. Young has saved a piece of hate mail from a writer who called him a “whiny, white piece of shit who thinks he’s so great.”

“I think that’s kind of blind,” Mr. Young said. “If you read about somebody who’s constantly self-medicating, no matter how fancy or upscale or celebrity or socialite the situation may be, you have to realize that there’s a sadness to it. It comes from a need to fill an emptiness that’s internal.”

At the party, Mr. Young read a short piece about a young woman he’d dated in high school; they engaged in a sex act in the very roof garden the guests were standing in, a fact that gave the story a certain frisson. Mr. Young’s mother chuckled knowingly, buzzing another guest in. The relationship as depicted in the story was not smooth; nor, indeed, was the relationship between Mr. Young and his parents. He recalled the time his father had once embarrassed him by showing a painting depicting an outsize, erect penis to Mr. Young’s classmates. At story’s end, Sept. 11, 2001, has come, and Mr. Young sees his father in a new light—as a protector. The crowd clapped, and Mr. Young and his father hugged.

Susan Shapiro, Mr. Young’s onetime writing teacher in a course at the New School, congratulated him on the reading. She had introduced Mr. Young  and Ms. Jong-Fast, her cousin, and arranged for Mr. Young to interview the novelist for a class project—a courtesy Ms. Shapiro frequently extends to her students to give them experience in profile writing. She also teaches the personal essay. “All writers have a hole in their heart, and they’re trying to compensate for the love or attention they need,” said Ms. Shapiro, whose three published memoirs and one how-to book include Five Men Who Broke My Heart.

Mr. Young’s interview with Ms. Jong-Fast ended up on Interview’s website, where he is now a regular contributor. He began by asking the writer, “What drives greed?”

“I thought he asked really good questions,” said Ms. Jong-Fast. “He actually read the book!” The pair remained friends. “I think he’s really talented. He’s like a really lovely person; you want to make sure he doesn’t get injured. He seems—I don’t know that this is true—he seems vulnerable.” How, exactly? “He has enormous eyes, and he’s very soft-spoken.”

Ms. Shapiro asked if Mr. Young had ever heard of Tin House, the literary quarterly. “It’s pretty prestigious!” she said, promising to set up a meeting between Mr. Young and a friend she knew there.

“Love it,” said Mr. Young.

“I went to LaGuardia and I majored in visual art,” Mr. Young told The Observer later, over sandwiches and Presidente beers axt the Rivington Street Dominican joint El Castillo de Jagua. “I think that was something I did to fulfill dreams my dad had of being an artist. My true passion was writing, and Bret Easton Ellis had gone to Bennington, Jonathan Lethem had gone to Bennington.”

A friend of Mr. Young’s in school, Kastoory Kazi, said that Mr. Young had been an outsider at college parties: “Someone in the room, to be snarky and annoying, said ‘What kind of music do you like?’ And he said the Smiths. We bonded over the Smiths all night.” Mr. Young remembers his time at Bennington with little fondness. Had he stayed, “I could easily see myself just being a big, bloated alcoholic in the middle of Vermont. I would have been lost.”

Ms. Kazi graduated from Bennington the spring after meeting Mr. Young, at which point he dropped out and returned to New York. The pair co-founded a magazine called Pomp & Circumstance. Ms. Kazi was the editor-in-chief, and Mr. Young was the personal essay editor.

“She asked me to come on board because she knew I had all this ambition but no real direction,” said Mr. Young.

“He was one of the most hard-working people within that magazine,” Ms. Kazi said. “Because of his fame-sharkness it was something he wanted to dive into. A lot of times, we were able to use the magazine as an excuse to go to great parties in the Hamptons.”

“It was like doing drugs,” Mr. Young said of his aggressive socializing. “You have that moment and you just need more.” He told The Observer about getting into a fight with a Project Runway contestant at a Stella McCartney party (Mr. Young wore fur to the famous vegan’s soirée) and getting shot by Patrick McMullan—albeit as the subject of a stock photo captioned “Atmosphere.”

“They’re just stupid New York stories,” he said. “They’re funny and they’re interesting in a larger context.”

Writing about his life eventually moved Mr. Young beyond his party phase. “I hadn’t really accomplished anything besides getting my dick sucked and hanging out with 14-year-olds at stupid parties and, like, seeing Yoko Ono and Boy George wink at me,” he explained. “I didn’t have anything concrete, and once I took [Ms. Shapiro’s] class and got published—I did. And I felt less of a need to do coke to feel confident or to feel that I was special.”

So what is that larger context? More pertinently, we wondered, what’s that hole in his heart Mr. Young’s seeking to fill? Mr. Young looked down. “I need another beer.”

A minute later, he continued. “I think that a lot of it came from growing up on the Lower East Side and being the only white Jew in my class until I was probably 7 or 8, probably being a minority. And in my home, my parents were loving and supportive, though of course, analyzing everything I did.”

As for how his parents reacted to Mr. Young’s airing of the family’s various dramas in print, Mr. Young told The Observer: “Years of therapy … We’re all very shrinky, and we’re all very much into analysis.” Mr. Young noted that his mother is a neuropsychologist who studies learning disabilities. “I always wanted to have a problem,” he said, somewhat wistfully. Ultimately, he created one, becoming something of an alcoholic after dropping out of college.

He hasn’t told his parents what’s in the book—aside from the excerpts he’s already published or read—but Fame Shark’s real theme, he says, is family. “Every time I read from it, they’re a little shocked … I think when they read the book and realize where I’m coming from, it will be really healing. I mean, that would be my hope … ”

We asked if there was any subject he considered off limits. “I can’t!” he said, laughing. “What’s off limits—and it’s not necessarily even interesting …” He was, for the first time in a conversation during which he’d volunteered that he’d snorted heroin with a model (he didn’t like it) and had oral sex with a male friend for a movie role (he really didn’t like it), lost for words.

“The things that are not off limits,” he continued, “are very provocative … I had an affair with a 14-year-old girl when I was 20. That’s something I’m willing to reveal. The things that I hold onto are not really juicy or scandalous. They’re kind of quiet times.

“I would hope that by talking with me, and meeting me now, people would see that fame is not something I’m still consumed with,” he added. That said, he didn’t especially mind being interviewed. “The fame shark in me is eating it up,” he admitted, “eating it alive.”

ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_